The Young Seigneur eBook

“My friends,” he proceeded, when the applause
began to subside, “I address you as heritors
and representatives of a glorious national title.
To wear it—­to be called ‘Frenchman’
is to stand in the ranks of the nobility of the human
race. I address you as a generous, a great, a
devoted people, a people brave of heart and unequalled
in intellectual ability, a people proud of themselves,
their deeds and the deeds of their fathers in New
France and in the fair France of the past, a people
above all intensely national, patriotic, jealous for
the advancement of their tongue and their race.
I address you as faithful of the ancient Church which
was founded on the Petrine Rock, and names itself Catholic,
Apostolic, Roman; whose altars God has preserved unshaken
through the centuries amid terrible hosts of enemies,
bitter oppressions, diabolical persecutions; of whose
faith your hearts, your bodies, your race itself,
are the consecrated depositories set apart and blessed
of Heaven.”

“I address you further, Frenchmen of Canada,
as an oppressed remnant, long crushed and evil treated
under alien conquerors; who despoiled you of your
dominion, your freedom and your future, and whose military
despotism, history records, spurned your cry during
eighty years with unspeakable arrogance; till you
rose like men in the despair of the ’37, for
the simplest rights, brandishing in your hands poor
scythes and knives against armies with cannon, O my
compatriots!—­and compelled them to dole
you a little justice!”

“The brave and generous who still remain of
the generation before, recount to you those living
scenes, and your hearts take part with the wronged
and valiant of your blood!”

“In this secluded countryside you see too little
how they still insult you. Ask yourselves frankly
whether that for which our nation strove has ever
yet been had. What have we gained? Is not
the battle still to be fought? There are no facts
more patent than that the English are our conquerors,
that they rule our country, that they are aliens, heretics,
enemies of our Holy Religion, and that they are heaping
up unrighteous riches, while we are becoming despised
and poor.”

“Think not that I speak without emotions in
my breast. There was a day, my poor French-Canadian
brothers,—­a solemn day, when I bound myself
by a great oath to the cause of my people. It
was when my father told me, his voice choking with,
tears, of the murder of my grandfather, ignominiously
thrown from the gallows for the felony of patriotism!
Was I wrong to rise in grief and wrath, and swear
with tears and prayers before our good Ste. Anne
that I would never rest or taste a pleasure until
I free the French-Canadians?”

“‘It is I who will defend my race and
my religion!’ cried I then, and I have ever
striven to do this, and still so strive.”

Having thus played along each different key of his
hearer’s prejudices, he turned them towards
his end.